One of the anomalies of the Washington electoral system is that each party has amazingly long winning streaks in certain races. The governor’s race gets the most attention, since our state has gone longer than any other in the country without a Republican at the helm (since 1985), and though that streak was ended by the voters in 2004, the judicial branch kept it alive by rewarding voter fraud and keeping Dino Rossi out of the governor’s mansion.
However, two other streaks in play for even longer saw much different results in the primary. In the Secretary of State race, incumbent Kim Wyman is fighting off a challenge from retired Microsoft millionaire (and supremely unqualified) Tina Podlodowski, and emerged from the primary with an early 48-46% lead (with the rest going to a Libertarian) in her effort to keep the seat in Republican hands, as it has been since 1964.
However, in the State Treasurer’s race, Democrats are on the verge of losing control of the office for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was President. As reported by Austin Jenkins at KPLU, “For the first time, it appears Washington voters could choose between two candidates from the same party for a statewide office. Early returns in the primary race for state treasurer had two Republicans, Benton County Treasurer Duane Davidson and Michael Waite, who works for a real estate investment firm, holding the top two positions after primary voters split their votes among three Democratic candidates.”
(Editor’s Note: Several members of the Shift team have worked on the Waite campaign, so we have a bit of a bias, though the numbers don’t lie.)
If the vote totals hold up through the next week or so of ballot counting – about half the votes were counted last night – voters will be left choosing between two Republicans for a job that hasn’t been held by the party since 1954.
So, we may only have to wait until next week, and not November, to see the Democrats’ 60-year Treasurer winning streak end, though we certainly will have to wait another 100 days or so to see if the voters will again end the liberals’ hold on the governor’s mansion.
